AIX vs VMS

[A. Lester Buck]

In article <9428 at stiatl.UUCP>, meo at stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) writes:
> buck at siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) writes:
> |hascall at cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
> |>     Hmmm, how novel...and how many years have these things been in VMS?
> |
> |And how many architectures does VMS run on?
> |
> |Oh, sorry.  I forgot we're not supposed to notice that putting features in
> |a portable operating system is much harder than to hack things in to a
> |particular machine.
> 
> And how many architectures does AIX run on?
> 
> Or, probably more importantly, how many different manufacturers'
> architectures? What? All IBM so far?

IBM architecture - RT
IBM architecture - RS/6000
IBM architecture - S/370
Intel architecture - i386

(rumors of)
Intel architecture - i860	(Wizard PS/2 cardset with 4xi860)
whatever comes out of Steve Chen's supercomputer work

Of course, with IBM not licensing AIX source to anyone, these are only
IBM machines, but that is not the same as AIX being a non-portable OS.

Rumors are that IBM's customers are pressing very hard for source
licenses and that someday such licenses will be available.  Whether
that would lead to ports to other machines, I can't predict.


-- 
A. Lester Buck     buck at siswat.lonestar.org  ...!texbell!moray!siswat!buck